NZ student team shows enterprise

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

New Zealand students have pulled off a coup by making it to the top five of an international entrepreneurship competition.

Waikato Management School's Students in Free Enterprise (Sife) team won the national competition in July, just four months after it formed.

Now the 50-student team has beaten teams from Britain, Russia, Mexico and the Philippines in the world cup competition between 31 countries.

The United States team won the competition.

Students had to run projects that teach enterprise to community groups.

The Waikato team undertook projects as diverse as helping to set up a chicken farm on a marae and publishing and selling a recipe book for a special needs preschool centre.

Students then had to present the results of their projects, showing how they taught entrepreneurship, how they used the internet and other media to promote their enterprise, that they were fiscally and ethically responsible (the project could not go into debt), that the enterprise was sustainable and that they measured their results.

Eleven of the Waikato students travelled to Frankfurt, Germany, to present their projects to the international judges, who included Tom Coughlin, vice-chairman of Wal-Mart and Tom Moser, chairman of KPMG.

Jens Mueller, executive director of Sife New Zealand, said the team's placing was particularly impressive as the top teams were separated by only fractions of a point. This showed it was possible for a country as small as New Zealand to win the world cup next year.

While there was no monetary prize for winners, sponsoring companies often recruited team members on the strength of what they had done during the competition, Mueller said. Three of the Waikato students had found jobs through the competition.

Mueller said Sife New Zealand was keen to encourage teams from more universities and polytechs to take part in next year's competition.

SIFE New Zealand